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Beach volleyball
25/10/2016

Provisional 2017 beach volleyball schedule announced

Lausanne, Switzerland, October 25, 2016 - Highlighted by World Championships, four five-star Swatch Major Series events and the Swatch Beach Volleyball FIVB World Tour Finals, the provisional 2017 FIVB Beach Volleyball Calendar features 22 events starting in the United States in February on Fort Lauderdale Beach in south Florida and featuring $6.35 million in prize money.

Seventeen of the events will be double gender tournaments with three stops being women’s only tournaments and two competitions featuring men’s only play. The signature event will be staged July 28 through August 6 in Austria when Vienna hosts the $1-million FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships for men and women on Danube Island.

In addition to the opening event in Fort Lauderdale, United States (February 7-12), other Swatch FIVB World Tour Major Series stops will be in Poreč, Croatia (June 27-July 2), Gstaad, Switzerland (July 4-9), and Hamburg, Germany (August 8-13). The season will close with the Swatch Beach Volleyball FIVB World Tour finals from August 22 to 27 at a location to be announced.

The FIVB is working with promoters to organise two additional five-star events in Italy and the United States.

The upcoming international beach volleyball schedule also features the introduction of the FIVB’s new five-star structure announced June 9 for the FIVB World Tour between 2017 and 2020 which will see all events on the tour assigned a star rating between one and five. Five and four star will be the highest level elite events while three, two and one star events are designed to develop the sport in as many regions as possible.

The five-star structure is one of the many steps taken by the FIVB to modernise and streamline its competitions in a golden period for beach volleyball on the back of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and on the road to Tokyo 2020. FIVB President Dr. Ary S. Graça F° said: “The aim of the new structure is to provide a platform and formation of events that increase the number of competitions in a growing number of hosting countries and create a sustainable business model while providing additional commercial flexibility and opportunities.”

In addition to Austria and the United States, 15 other countries will host competitions with Malaysia hosting an international beach volleyball event for the first time in mid-April. Prague (Czech Republic), which hosted a Rio 2016 Olympic qualifying event in 2015, will return to host a 2017 FIVB World Tour stop.

Australia, Korea and Morocco will also host FIVB World Tour events under the star structure. Australia last hosted an International Volleyball Federation beach volleyball stop in 2008 in Adelaide. Korea’s last FIVB World Tour event was a 2010 stop in Seoul. Morocco’s Agadir Beach will again host an international event after staging a World Tour stop in 2011.

After the successful presentation of the new events structure at the 35th FIVB World Congress at the beginning of the month, a number of one, two and three-star events may be added to the calendar by the end of November. A finalised calendar will be made available on the occasion of the World Tour Council which will take place in Lausanne on November 30.

In addition to the FIVB World Tour events, the international federation will stage the FIVB U21 World Championships from June 13 to 18 in China at the site for the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing.